1. If "merit" is determined by things like SAT scores, which correlate with race and class but not with anything useful, then it is a problem when colleges divert resources from the students who do better on metrics more closely correlated with success but can't afford to attend without financial aid.
3. That's entirely your opinion. It is nonsense to assert that "no one cares" about learning outcomes or anything other than networking. Make an argument for why learning outcomes shouldn't matter if you must, but that isn't something you can just assert and expect everyone else to agree with you.
I think this does a good job of illustrating what a good answer to this kind of problem is and why it is not a stupid question to ask at an interview: http://what-if.xkcd.com/4/
> First, let’s start with wild ballpark approximations. This is an example of what might go through my head before I even pick up a calculator, when I’m just trying to get a sense of the quantities - the kind of calculation where 10, 1, and 0.1 are all close enough that we can consider them equal:
> I can pick up a mole (animal) and throw it.[Citation needed] Anything I can throw weighs one pound. One pound is one kilogram. The number 602,214,129,000,000,000,000,000 looks about twice as long as a trillion, which means it’s about a trillion trillion. I happen to remember that a trillion trillion kilograms is how much a planet weighs.
[illustration showing that a trillion is visually approximately one half of one mole]
> … if anyone asks, I did not tell you it was ok to do math like this.
> That’s enough to tell us that we’re talking about pile of moles on the scale of planets. It’s a pretty rough estimate, though, since it could be off by a factor of thousands in either direction.
Anything general I could say has already been said in this thread and others (it's to see how you think about the problem, not about the answer, etc.), but for me it was seeing some examples like this one that finally made me get it.
I'm glad you're studying this. I think it would be useful to look at the comment threads about articles that have anything to do with sexism or women in tech - they are quite telling. Here are a couple of examples, but really, it happens every time there is an article about women that acknowledges the possibility that there might be some sexism in hacker culture.
Why does having women invest in startups require a cessation of other forms of activism? I'll buy that having women loudly invest in startups might help the gender gap. But that and other efforts are not mutually exclusive. There isn't even tension between them. It's a false dichotomy.
"So forgive me if i’m getting a little tired of people telling me: 1) Why I need to put more women speakers on panels at conferences (we’re trying), 2) How women are still at a disadvantage in tech (yeah, i know), or 3) What MEN should be doing to help WOMEN in tech"
Why start out by ostracizing the people who are already vocally fighting against gender discrimination and latent sexism? It just detracts from his point about angel investing. The comment thread here is evidence of this - half the posts are ranting about feminists, affirmative action, and generally anybody who thinks there is a sexism problem in tech. The suggestion about angel investing is lost in the circlejerk.
"(sure they [men] could do more, but frankly it’s your [women's] problem not theirs)."
This is as false as it is offensive. When smart, talented women are discouraged from going into tech en masse because of a sexist culture, it is everybody's problem. In Bill Gates' words to a Saudi Arabian audience, "Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the top ten.”
"To which I reply: Physician, Heal Thy Damn Self. You don’t need men to solve the problem."
Men are the ones who dominate the industry now, and it is mostly men who contribute to the sexist culture (note that I am not saying most men contribute to this. I am saying most of the primary contributors to the culture being unfriendly to women are men. There is an important distinction there. Being a man does not make you automatically sexist). We need men AND women to solve the problem. We don't have to choose just one.
On a minor note, at the end he writes
"thanks to many women who helped proofread early drafts of this post… most of whom I didn’t listen to about how to make it better"
I like how he flat out admits that he is ignoring the opinions of women. What was that about it not being men's problem?
For the claim that all forms of love, respect etc. Boil down to sexual attraction? Yes. I don't know where you've been for the past 40 years, but Freud's theories on sexuality had no basis in empiricism and are no longer accepted among modern psychologists.
> But a boy who plays with a Barbie gets the shit beaten out of him. Possibly even by his own parents.
I already pre-empted this. Read my comment again. Barbies are sex objects. LEGOs are precursors to a respectable career path. It's not a valid comparison.
> and develop stress-related problems at a higher rate, and die years younger than women.
Please, tell me more about how women are systematically oppressing men. Sure, there are some areas in which women have an advantage. The life expectancy thing is likely biological. Many other apparent examples of "reverse sexism" are in fact products of the other kind of sexism - e.g., the oft-cited statistics about divorce law and custody battles - women have an advantage here because society, and the law, tend to see women as being in the domestic sphere while men are supposed to be the ones with careers. Is it sexist? yes. Does it show that sexism isn't an issue? not in the slightest.
> I do not believe this has got anything to do with sexism
> That is our culture
Has it ever occurred to you that "our culture" might be a bit sexist?
> Men have to approach women, or they don't get laid
1. Approach doesn't have to mean sexual harassment
2. Women can like sex too. And women can approach men too. mind blowing, no?
> He probably needed to do something like that and get away with it to be happy?
What? What if the "something like that" were rape? What if it were murder? This whole paragraph reeks of you not thinking women's consent/feelings on who touches them matter.
> I grab my girlfriend's ass sometimes
Can you really not see how this is different from grabbing the ass of a random stranger at a professional-ish conference?
> Teach men how to express their sexuality in a way that works.
Damn, I was really hoping you were going to end that sentence with something like "that doesn't make women very uncomfortable" or "that doesn't make women feel undervalued or disrespected". I guess this far into your post I should have realized that your "solution" would also be entirely from the man's perspective of "getting" sex from women. And herein lies the problem that both you and the men at the conference share: you view women primarily as a means to sexual gratification. If you view men primarily as intellectual peers and women first as sex objects and only secondarily as intellectual beings, that is sexism.
> There is something about IT that either appeals especially to males, or males are particularly skilled at. I have no idea why.
Really? You have no idea? You don't think it might possibly have something to do with sexism in society and in IT culture?
From early childhood, girls are taught that the ought to be interested in princesses, dolls, and playing house, while boys are taught that they ought to be interested in LEGOs, trains, cars, building things, computers, math, science, sports, etc. When you go to McDonalds, they ask if you are a boy or a girl, and if you are a girl, they give you a Barbie, while if you are a boy, they give you a car. If for some reason you are a girl and would prefer to play with LEGOs, your peers make fun of you relentlessly. Boys get to play with LEGOs without the stigma. And don't start telling me about reverse sexism and how hard it is for boys who want to play with dolls - the media doesn't portray the gendered interests as separate but equal. It portrays the boys' activities as "cool" and the girls' activities as domestic. The grown-up version of playing with LEGOs has much higher social standing in society than the grown-up version of playing with dolls. It is not a valid comparison.
It continues from there. Teachers tend to call on boys more often than they call on girls. Boys are taught to be aggressive while girls are taught to be submissive. This leads to aggressive girls being called "bitches" while boys who behave the same way are praised for being "assertive". The list goes on and on and on, and the only way you could not notice it is if you have the privilege of not having to pay attention because it doesn't detrimentally affect you.
And then we have articles like this. Say you're a smart, college-age woman. You are really good at computer science, and you are also really good at, say, writing/things that might be pre-law. You know that if you pursue computer science, you will be one of the only women and will have to put up with the kind of behavior the article talks about, potentially for your entire career, whereas if you pursue law, you will be surrounded by a somewhat even mix of men and women, and that kind of behavior will be much less tolerated. Tell me which field it makes sense to choose, and then tell me again that sexism doesn't play a role.
Without fail, the top comment on every HN link related to sexism in the field is "that's not sexism!". What is it going to take to convince you that sexism in the tech community is real and is a big part of why there are so few women? How many women have to tell you about their experiences being sexually harassed at tech conferences before you realize that it is a problem? HN/Reddit's responses to this kind of article piss me off almost as much as the events described in the articles themselves.